


Senior Year

by ssrhpurgatory



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28373127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: It's senior year at Hephaestus High, and Alexander Hilbert and Isabel Lovelace are stumbling their way through it as best friends, one awkward moment at a time.
Relationships: Alexander Hilbert/Original Female Character, Isabel Lovelace/Renée Minkowski
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Senior Year

Isabel threw her apron over her clothes and came out of the back room. Alex was manning the counter, though there wasn’t anyone in the coffee shop at the moment, so he was wiping down the counter somewhat absentmindedly. Isabel slid up to the sink behind him and started washing up the blender pieces that were sitting in the bottom, and Alex shot her a grateful look over his shoulder.

“Lots of blended drinks today, huh?”

“That is eighth time those have needed washing since I arrived. Am starting to feel like Sisyphus,” Alex complained.

“Well, I’m happy to give you a hand with this particular boulder.”

They went about their tasks silently for a few minutes, but Isabel could never stay quiet for long, especially not with the terrible music that always played in the cafe.

“So I saw you’re not on the schedule next week. What’s up with that?”

“Ah.” Alex froze for a moment in her peripheral vision, then went back to cleaning the nozzles on the milk steamer. “I am taking Microbiology and AP Chemistry this year, and it looks like there were enough interested students for the school to offer that Multivariable Calculus class. I will not have time for job on top of school work.”

Isabel snorted. “Yeah, right, with your big genius brain? You’ll breeze through that stuff.”

Alex went quiet again, but this time, Isabel waited him out. Finally, he said, “Heard Elizabeth say they would only keep on two high school students for afternoon shifts once school is in session. You need job more than I do. So does Oswin.”

“Aw, Alex. You do care.”

“Tell no one,” he grumbled at her. Isabel laughed.

“So, Micro, Chemistry, and Multivariable Calculus. What’s the rest of your schedule look like?”

Over the next half hour, in between the customers that started trickling in, they compared schedules. They had the same lunch period and were in English together directly afterwards, but aside from that, they didn’t have any overlap in their schedules. “What you get for being an overachieving STEM nerd,” Isabel said, sticking her tongue out at him.

“What you get for being a meathead jock,” Alex shot back.

“It is hard to believe that this is our last year of high school, though,” Isabel added in a more contemplative tone of voice. “I’m not looking forward to college applications.”

“Do not worry. Some recruiter will see you do jump shot in game once basketball season starts and snatch you up on full athletic scholarship.”

“And you’ll come up with the cure for the common cold and get fast-tracked to a doctorate at some fancy research university.”

“Would much rather come up with cure for uncommon cold.” Alex considered for a moment. “Or bird flu.”

“Well, good luck with that.” Isabel raised the coffee she’d poured out for herself in between customers in a little salute. “And I’ll keep practicing my jump shot.”

A week later, Alex found himself sitting in homeroom, wishing the day were already over. Their principal, Mr. Cutter, liked to go on (and on and on) in morning announcements, and the first day back at school, he was always at his most... Alex mentally searched through the terms he’d been studying for the vocab portion of the SATs he’d be taking later that month for something appropriate. Ah, ebullient. Mr. Cutter was always at his most ebullient on the first day back to school.

Alex tuned out the over-the-top threats Mr. Cutter was making about what happened to students who happened to misbehave under his watch and turned back to doodling microbes absentmindedly in his notebook. He was looking forward to Microbiology; the teacher had a doctorate in the subject, and was usually a college professor, but every other year she made time to come to Hephaestus High and teach her subject to high schoolers. Isabel was probably right that Alex would breeze through most of his subjects, or at least the science and math. Despite having lived in the United States for nearly half his life, Alex was still occasionally a little hazy when it came to English. It wasn’t the language itself that was a problem; he just didn’t see the point of analyzing and dissecting every text they read. Couldn’t something just be beautiful sometimes? Couldn’t something just be a story, no hidden meanings anywhere?

“Alex! Hey, Alex!”

Kuan Hui was leaning across the aisle to poke Alex in the shoulder with a pencil. Alex shot a glare in the other boy’s direction. “What?”

“Let me see your schedule.” Alex handed the piece of paper over, and Kuan let out a sigh of relief. “Oh thank god, Victoire isn’t going to be the only person I know in Multivariable.”

Alex frowned. “I thought you and Victoire were friends.”

“Yeah, well, so did I. But things have been a bit awkward lately, and I have no idea why. And you’re an excellent buffer.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “I beg pardon?”

“Exactly like that. You can cut straight through any awkwardness in the room with your dad voice.” Kuan gave Alex an anxious little smile.

“I was not aware I had a ‘dad voice.’” Alex said with just a bit of consternation.

“The daddest of voices,” Kuan said, distracted by something else on Alex’s schedule. “Hey, no Physics?”

“I took it last year, remember? Already have AP credits.”

“Oh, right. Well, at least you still have the Doc for homeroom.”

The announcements came to an end, finally, and Alex and Kuan looked up at their homeroom teacher, Dr. Minkowski, who had propped his elbows on his desk and his chin in his hands and appeared to have—ah, yes, he’d fallen asleep. Someone from across the room threw a wadded up piece of paper at Dr. Minkowski’s head, and he woke up with a snort. “Ah, has that man finished droning on? Wonderful. Well. I had an announcement or two for you lot, but as it appears the bell is going to go off in,” he turned and squinted at the clock behind his head, “two minutes, might as well let you hooligans gossip until it goes.” And then he put his chin back in his hands and, to all appearances, seemed to fall asleep again.

Kuan got a mischievous look in his eye and wadded up the closest piece of paper… which happened to be Alex’s schedule. And then he lobbed it at Dr. Minkowski’s head.

One of Dr. Minkowski’s hands flew out from under his chin and caught the ball of paper before it got close. “Nice try, Kuan, but next time, wait for me to start snoring first.” He unwadded the piece of paper. “And perhaps use your own property for such shenanigans. Want your schedule back, Alex?”

Alex shook his head. He had already memorized it. “Recycle it, please.”

“Very well.” The teacher wadded the schedule back up and tossed it into the recycling bin in the corner.

A few seconds later, the bell rang and Alex was off to Multivariable Calculus, side-by-side with Kuan.

Kuan had been right. Things _were_ weird between him and Victoire. Weird enough that even Alex noticed, and Alex wasn’t always the best at picking up on interpersonal conflicts. Normally, they’d choose desks right next to one another and immediately fall into a debate about something that was only ever about 50% interesting to Alex, but instead of sitting in the empty desk next to Kuan, Victoire glanced at him only long enough to give him a nod of recognition, and headed towards the other side of the room, where a chubby black girl with brightly-colored braids wound around her head was sitting. Alex thought he’d seen the black girl in the yearbook, but he had no idea what her name was.

And as the rest of the class filtered into the room, Alex noticed that, after Victoire, she was the only other girl in the room. Oh, no, there was Hera, on her own in the back corner of the room. Ah, and Renée, Dr. Minkowski’s daughter, slipped in right before the bell. She glanced around the room with a frown and then made a beeline for the empty desk behind Alex. But even with the addition of Renée, the male students in the room still outnumbered the female students by three-to-one. Alex couldn’t quite blame Victoire for heading for what must have looked like a safe haven in a sea of testosterone.

Renée tapped Alex on the shoulder, and he half-turned in his chair to look at her.

“Hey. You have a good summer?”

Alex shrugged. “So-so. Spent most of summer working at Tiamat’s Beans with Oswin and Isabel.”

Renée’s cheeks flushed at the mention of Isabel, but her tone of voice remained the same. “Sounds better than my summer, at least.”

“You were going to Poland and France to see parents’ families, yes?”

“Yeah. And mostly it was fine, but while we were in Paris some asshole spit on my mother and called her a dirty Paki and told her to go home. Never mind that her family’s been in France for three generations. And then we got to dad’s mom, and…” Renée shuddered. “Babcia has always said that never minded my parents getting married, but that doesn’t mean she’s willing to be seen outside the house with them and their obviously mixed-race daughter.”

“Yikes,” was all that Alex could think to say.

The teacher rapped on his desk and called out from the front of the room, “All right, guys, I know some of you haven’t seen each other all summer, but you’re in class now. Leave the socializing for later, please?”

Alex turned in his chair and tried to pay attention, but this was the first year that there had been enough demand for Multivariable Calculus in their school and it was incredibly obvious after the first ten minutes of class that the teacher had no idea what he was doing. So instead, Alex resolved to read the textbook and make the best of it, and turned back to doodling in his notebook and hoping that the rest of his classes would go better.


End file.
